The updated privacy policy page (which was uploaded 2 days ago) for Audacity includes a wide range of data collection mechanisms. While Audacity is nothing more than a desktop program, its developers want to make it phone home with various data taken from users’ machines. The parent company is a multi-national company and it has been trying to start a data-collection mechanism in the software. The same company owns other projects in its portfolio such as Ultimate Guitar (Famous website for Guitar enthuisasts) and MuseScore (Open source music notation software).Įver since, Audacity has been a heated topic. The famous open source audio manipulation program was acquired by a company named Muse Group two months ago. For example, IP addresses are stored in an identifiable way for a day before being hashed and then stored in servers for a year, leaving users identifiable via government data requests. The storage of said data is located in servers in the U.S., Russia, and the European Economic Area. More concerning perhaps is the inclusion of a vague section listing data that must be collected "for legal enforcement, litigation, and authorities' requests (if any)." The type of data collected now includes the computer's processor, operating system and version, the user's IP address, and any crash reports, fatal error codes and messages generated by their machine. According to Fosspost, changes to the privacy policy section on the Audacity website indicate that several personal data collection mechanisms have since been added by the parent company. Two months ago, Audacity was acquired by Muse Group, which owns other audio-related projects including the Ultimate Guitar website and the MuseScore app.
SOURCE AUDIO EDITOR HAS BECOME SPYWARE SOFTWARE
Popular open-source audio editing software Audacity is facing "spyware" allegations from users for recent privacy policy changes that suggest the desktop app is collecting user data and sharing it with third parties, including state regulators where applicable.
SOURCE AUDIO EDITOR HAS BECOME SPYWARE CODE
Q: Will someone fork the code and strip out the "Phone Home" code? On April 30, the Muse Group acquired Audacity with the promise that the software would 'remain forever free and open source. From a report: Audacity has been around for over 21 years and classes as the world's most popular audio editing software. Q: Is this something to be concerned about? Anyone deciding to download the free and open-source audio editor Audacity is being warned that the software may now be classified as spyware due to recent updates to its privacy policy. Audacity is something I only use on occasion.
Yesterday, I read three articles on Audacity and how it is now possible spyware under its new owners.